Conserving Threatened Wet Tropics Vegetation project

Breaking it down into stages

NQ Dry Tropics is leading a four-year project to improve the lot of endangered ecological communities and species in the wet tropics area just to the north of Townsville.

The Conserving Threatened Wet Tropics Vegetation project also aims to improve the condition of threatened ecological communities such as broad leaf tea-tree (Melaleuca viridiflora) woodlands, beach scrubs or littoral rainforest, coastal vine thickets and lowland tropical rainforests in the region.

In turn, this will improve habitat used by two species on Queensland’s “threatened” list — the Mahogany glider (Petaurus gracilis) and the Southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii).

Project Manager Caralea Hensler marking out mounting points for an array of wildelife monitoring cameras in a Broadleaf tea-tree woodland.

Project manager NQ Dry Tropics Biodiversity Project Officer Caralea Hensler hopes to achieve the  improvements by tackling some of the threats to the ecological communities through:

• weed control;
• debris removal;
• property management plans —
  • better grazing management
  • better fire regimes; and
• discouraging dumping, 4WDs and other damaging activity on natural areas.

This will be achieved through workshops in the area, targeted communications products including signage.

Caralea knows the area well, having spent a lot of time as a child at the family beach hut at Crystal Creek (site of one of the beach scrub communities) as well as visiting her grandparents’ at their farm in the area.

She plans to break the project down into three main stages:

1. To encourage small practice changes by landholders that could be a big help in reducing risk to local ecological communities of broad leaf tea-trees. Caralea said uncontrolled fire, for example, was a major threat to these communities and indiscriminate grazing or bovine access during wet periods could exacerbate that by removing or damaging ground cover, providing opportunity for invasive weeds to establish and, later in the season, to become a fire-risk. Including the tea-tree forests in the landholders’ normal weed reduction programs would benefit that threatened ecological community and benefit the landholder by reducing the on going threat of “weeds from the forest” to productive pastures. Feral animals, including brumbies can also damage the wet ground floor
2. Continuing and the work conducted during the past decade in littoral rainforests (beach scrub) to protect and improve the health of these endangered ecological communities. This would include regular removal of marine debris, removal and control of weeds.
3. In the lowland rainforest communities, Caralea said she hoped to be able to implement revegetation programs, tackle any weed or feral animal problems and help landholders with land bordering on lowland rainforest to make small practice changes to protect those communities.

This project is jointly funded by the Australian Government’s Natural Heritage Trust, NQ Dry Tropics, a member of the Regional Delivery Partners panel, and NQ Dry Tropics.

This project will help to fill in some of the knowledge gaps about the numbers and southern extent of the range of the threatened southern cassowary.

Ecologist Wren McLean of Superb Wren Ecological Services leads the Paluma Range Cassowary research project conducting sign, fruit and camera trap surveys to determine distribution and abundance of cassowaries in the area.

The project, continuing on from BirdLife Townsville work in the area, will also examine habitat condition and identify existing and potential threats.

Ms McLean said birds had been located and photographed in traps at Paluma Range. She said they were likely to move across a large area to reach specific fruiting trees or high density stands of fruit trees.

Breeding season, a period when males and females are more mobile and likely to cross into each other’s ranges, begins as early as April and continues through to August.

Before the male can think about mating, however, he must make sure chicks from the previous year have struck out on their own and won’t hinder his attempts to find a mate.

Mating accomplished, the females lay three to five distinctive olive-green eggs between June and October leaving the males to incubate the eggs and raise the hatchlings.